“at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this rain changed from blue to black and leftnothing.”

“I love you."lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back.It's time. I feel it, I know it. My eyes on him, his on me, and both of us breathing, watching, tired of of waiting. Ky close his eyes, but mine are still open. what will it feel like, his lips on mine? Like a secret told, a promise kept? Like that line in the poem-a shower of all my days- silvery rain falling all around me, where the lighting meets the earth? The whistle blows below us and the moment breaks. We are safe.For now.”

“Can you climb high enough to get above the clouds, look down on the rain from a place in the sun?”

“So many times in my life I’ve felt as though looking at Em is like seeing another variation of myself, but I don’t feel that way now. Too much has changed recently. Still, Em is my best girl friend. Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.-Cassia, from the novel Matched.”

“Our time together feels like a storm, like a wild wind and rain, like something too big to handle but too powerful to escape.”

“I'm standing in a river. It's blue. Dark blue. Reflecting the color of the evening sky.”

“My fingers smell like soil and my lips taste like sugar and I'm so awake right now I wonder if I'll be able to sleep tonight.”